Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: shybuck on August 21, 2012, 02:11:15 pm
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I'd like to hear some suggestions for my next purchase. I have a 5D MKII with the 24-105mm, f/4L and will be using ND filters at the ocean. I've done panos and tend to enjoy a long rectangular format. My only dislike of my current lens is how slow it is in many other instances so I'm thinking maybe a fast new wide angle
possibly with zoom. I want good glass. Any ideas? Thanks
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First suggestions are the new (not yet released) 24-70 f/2.8 II or the 16-35 f/2.8 II. Cheaper alternative for the 16-35 would be the 17-40 f/4 but you seem to say that f/4 isn't fast enough. Other than that, you'll have to use primes. Canon and Zeiss offer plenty of choices.
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F/4 is "too slow" for landscape work? You could try going from ISO 100 up to 640 or 800 on your 5D Mark II and ETTR ( Expose To The Right) when shooting raw as long as you still have nough captured dynamic range.
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F/4 is "too slow" for landscape work? You could try going from ISO 100 up to 640 or 800 on your 5D Mark II and ETTR ( Expose To The Right) when shooting raw as long as you still have enough captured dynamic range.
I agree totally - I usually shoot at f/8 or smaller for landscapes for increased depth of field.
I use my 24-105 extensively for landscapes - I re-worked a number of images last night that were taken last September with this lens, and I don't recall anything that was shot at any larger aperture than f/8; not even f/5.6
The only other lens I would suggest for landscapes is the TSE24 MarkII - or perhaps the TSE17. But the 24-105 is so handy when one can't walk out into the ocean or off the side of a cliff to change perspective. ;D
A tripod is your best friend.
Glenn
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As usual I wasn't clear enough with my question. My 24-105 is slow for "other" instances, so I'd like a suggestion on something faster to walk around with. I did receive some great suggestions on lens. I am now looking at the 50mm 1.4. Thanks for all your suggestions.
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If you want an AF 50mm f1.4 for Canon you should take a look at the Sigma.
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Yes, I've read lot about the back and forth with these two lenses. What's your take on the Sigma?
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My 24-105 is slow for "other" instances, so I'd like a suggestion on something faster to walk around with.
The three wheeled walkers tend to be faster and easier to manoeuvre but can be a little less stable than the four wheeled models.
As with any other gear, I feel that the photographer should actually try the walker.
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i've just replaced my Canon 50 1.4 with a another Canon 50 1.4 that has better wide open perfomance. the 50 1.4 is very sharp starting at f2.8, but there is sample variation at larger apertures (particulary wide open) and the autofocus wide open is not reliable (which is why i thought resolution was so bad wide open) - my old lens had serious autofocus issues on 50% of the test images, the new lens on only 25%! Canon seriously needs to upgrade this lens.
However at the apertures normally used for landscape it's about as sharp as anything available, reasonably priced, relatively light and compact
The other reasonably fast lens with high resolution from wide open plus reliable autofocus is the 85 f1.8 which is nearly the same size and price as the 50 1.4. a nice lens for some applications and very nice for stitching
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If you like doing stitched panoramas, how about the 135mm F2 or 200mm F2.8? With a multi-row panorama kit you can shoot as wide as you like, and the resolution is amazing. Of course there are a few potential problems:
You need enough detail in each frame to enable the software (I use Photoshop) to stitch the frames. If some of your frames contain only ocean and sky, it probably won't work.
Depth of focus might be an issue with longer lenses if some parts of the scene are relatively nearby.
You'll want a computer with plenty of memory to handle big panoramas. My 8GB machine isn't really adequate - it gets the job done, but takes ages. You might be able to get away with 16GB, but I'd recommend at least 32GB, and plan on putting 64GB in my next machine. Fortunately memory is cheaper than it's ever been.